Free Jubilate by Michael Arditti Page B

the altar during his last Lourdes mass. A taciturn nun directs us to the third floor, where we enter a scene of complete disarray . Suitcases, rucksacks and shopping bags are piled high along one wall. Boxes of food, medical and cleaning supplies, rugs and windcheaters are stacked up along another. A uniformed nurse of indeterminate rank is handing out instructions to a trio of brancardiers , none of whom looks to be over twenty. Scanning their earnest faces, I wonder if they are here of their own accord or have been bullied into it by parents and priests.
    I identify Kevin, a painfully thin lad with acne scars and a thicket of tawny hair, and ask if he will share his first impressions with the camera.
    ‘First impressions of what?’
    ‘Anything you like. The town. The journey. The pilgrimage. They’re your impressions, not mine.’
    Ignoring his friends’ taunts, he takes out a comb and runs it through his hair. ‘I’ve my reputation to think of,’ he says shyly.
    ‘This will do wonders for it, believe me,’ I say, steering him into position and nodding to Jamie to start filming. ‘It’s early days yet, Kevin, but perhaps you can tell us what you’re hoping for from your time in Lourdes?’
    Answers,’ he replies with unnerving intensity. ‘Why? Are you going to give us some?’
    ‘Answers to what?’
    ‘People come to Lourdes cos they’re good people, right?’
    ‘In the main, yes; I expect so,’ I reply, taken aback.
    ‘Then God lets them die. Why?’ My studied silence forces him to expand. ‘This morning, we passed a pile-up on the autoroute. A coach full of Poles … Polish people. It skidded across three lanes, straight into the opposite traffic. There was blood and guts everywhere . You could see the bodies.’
    ‘No you couldn’t, Kev.’ One of his friends interjects. ‘They were all covered up.’
    ‘Well you could see the stretchers, so you knew they were there! And there was this stink of burning flesh.’
    ‘Burning tyres, you dork!’
    Kevin draws me aside. ‘But they weren’t ordinary Poles. They were pilgrims who’d been to Lourdes. Yesterday – maybe this morning even – they were at mass. Some of them were sick. Some of them were kids. Some of them were sick kids. Maybe some of them had been cured. What’s the point of coming here then if God allows that to happen? Tell me: what?’ I say nothing, signalling to Jamie to zoom in on Kevin’s tortured face, confident that it is far more eloquent than any doubts I might express.
    I wind up the interview, leaving Kevin to resume his duties. Venturing further on to the ward, I spot Gillian outside the nurses’ station.
    ‘You’re staying here?’ I ask inanely.
    ‘With Richard.’
    ‘I thought it was only for hospital pilgrims.’ The words slip out as though I had no more self-control than Richard.
    ‘And their carers.’
    ‘You’re his carer?’
    ‘So I’m told. I used to be his wife.’ She disappears down the corridor with an indifference more painful than either anger or contempt . I return to the dining room and to Sophie’s announcement that Louisa has just summoned everyone to mass. It will be my first since my father’s requiem and, for all my disbelief, I have a profounddread of saying or doing anything that will mark me out as a fraud.
    We wait our turn at the lifts and go up to the chapel, which is spare, bright and anonymous. The Committee’s concerns about the filming had centred on the services and we are careful to address them, standing unobtrusively at the back. The room quickly fills up. Some of the wheelchair-pushers reveal their inexperience, but good humour prevails, with even a head-on collision eliciting a cry of ‘Hold on! I’ve not bought a ticket for the dodgems.’ Once everyone is settled, Father Humphrey, his stomach straining his surplice , moves to the altar and declares that before the mass ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’ wishes to say a few words. The epithet is greeted by titters from